CRM

I wrote a while back about Room at The Bottom, and how once a space gets big enough (~$100m) or so … the biggest guys end up abandoning many of the smallest customers and segments in their space. Which once a space is at, say $100m in market size, can open up a $10m hole […]

Dreamforce is an impressive conference, though I have never actually attended one. At least not in person, I always make it a point to watch the posted videos as the show has some truly impressive content. This year there was decidedly less video posted, I think the CMOs that get featured are increasingly restricting their […]

There’s been a lot of talk among a new breed of CRM providers recently about finding the right balance of functionality and complexity to meet the needs of very small businesses. While salesforce has cleaned up in the enterprise cloud CRM space, there’s no denying it’s product offering is both priced a little too high, […]

News that salesforce has acquired service desk vendor Assistly in a move that many of us had an inkling about well before DreamForce – it seems that dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s of he deal saw it closing after the event. Assistly is a young company that is squarely positioned to compete with […]

Owning and running a bunch of small businesses, I have a real appreciation for just how important it is for SMBs to have a handle on their customers and deal flow – CRM, a concept foreign to many SMBs only a few years ago has become, with the growing importance of social media, a critical […]

To understand what Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) is, we have to start with a clear definition. The definition must be clearly articulated and easily understood by individuals in the industry. In the Magic Quadrant for Social CRM, Gartner writes, “Social CRM applications need to be far more customer-centric than more-traditional CRM applications. Without benefits […]

Gartner, the leading research firm, said SaaS will grow by 21% this year with CRM leading the way. Based on the trends we have been observing in the recent years, this is pretty much expected. After the initial FUD and maturation of cloud based technologies, enterprises are looking beyond the security and privacy issue to […]

Paul Greenberg did. Simon is off doing X-Factor instead Joke apart, if you are in the CRM business, or interested in CRM, or even just social software, chances are you’ve heard of Paul Greenberg. Simply said, he is the Godfather of CRM. And Godfathers get to make decisions. If you follow Paul’s annual CRM Watchlist […]

I missed the Social CRM Summit today – twice. Not only did I not physically attend, but I was occupied with work and only found time in my lunch break to quickly scan a few tweets. Now it’s after dinner, there are 700 tweets, and I am ready to analyse away. Of course I use […]

Gartner has predicted that the market for social CRM software will be over $1 Billion by 2012. According to the research firm, social CRM spending will rise exponentially in 2011 and a 3 year shakeout will begin in the space. The huge potential in the space has resulted in over 100 vendors entering the market […]

This morning Zoho, known for SMB focused SaaS offerings in the areas of productivity, collaboration, business processes launched an Accounting app: Zoho Books. I typically don’t do detailed product reviews, when I see the first good ones, will link to them – just a few points here and then let’s discuss how it rounds out […]

After dilly dallying for a long time, Microsoft is going global with their cloud push. Today, Microsoft CEO announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will be available globally. This is the cloud version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 which itself will be available globally on Feb 28, 2011. It is now available at 40 […]

CloudAve readers know I am a fan of edgy marketing. Now it’s time to update my recently compiled inventory of software marketing pranks. A major show like Salesforce.com’s DreamForce would not even be real without some guerilla marketing activity – except the players seemed to have traded places this year. Guerilla Marketing is normally David’s […]

Today’s big news is that HP is dropping Siebel CRM now owned by Oracle in favor of Salesforce.com. It’s a bit unfortunate that this is presented in the context of personal ego wars – unfortunate, but understandable, considering that Oracle has been on a warpath with HP ever since former CEO Hurd got ousted, in […]

If you put a consultant, an analyst, a vendor, and an end user client together in the same room and ask them to explain or discuss social CRM or social business (or pretty much anything else) you will get very different answers and explanations. Nothing is ever one-sided so why bother trying to look at […]